Articles

Rural educators face just as many challenges as urban colleagues when it comes to helping children of color. But there are tools to help them.

It’s widely understood that African-American kids—and other children of color—get fewer opportunities in life than white kids. But still, it is jarring to find that perception overwhelmingly confirmed in a survey of adults whose jobs involve helping children.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s work is so powerful and popular that it has never been out of print, selling more than 30 million copies.

Active parents make a teacher’s job much easier. They check up on homework assignments, help with discipline and guarantee that education is valued.

One hundred eighty years ago today, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This law set in motion the long, agonizing chain of events that ultimately led to the Trail of Tears.

The Texas State Board of Education has been ridiculed in recent weeks for its efforts to rewrite the curriculum standards of the state’s K-12 textbooks. Starting today, the conservative majority on the 15-member board is expected to approve a rightward lurch in those standards.

My mother’s birth certificate, dated 1915 and issued in Brooklyn, New York, gives her name as Maria. I knew her only as Mary, the name that appears on her marriage certificate, her social security card and her gravestone. Her sister Philomena was so determined to get away from her name that she had it changed legally to Phyliss. Their brother Philipo chopped his down to Philip. Their other siblings? Anna became Anne, Elisa morphed into Alice and Cosimo was known to his friends as Pete.

On August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington, Dorothy Height sat on the speakers’ platform and listened to Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. She had helped organize the rally that brought about 250,000 people to the National Mall. In fact, she’d been in the forefront of the civil right struggle for decades as the president of the National Council of Negro Women.

Hundreds of high school and college students gathered around the state capitol in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday. They were there to convince Gov. Jan Brewer to veto Senate Bill 1070. These young protesters were disappointed though. Brewer signed the bill and instantly set back relations between whites and Latinos in Arizona and other parts of the country.

There’s an old joke among real estate agents that the three most important things to consider in any property are location, location, location.